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Benjamin P. Edwards

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Benjamin Edwards joined the faculty of the William S. Boyd School of Law in 2017. He researches and writes about business and securities law, corporate governance, arbitration, and consumer protection.

Prior to teaching, Professor Edwards practiced as a securities litigator in the New York office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. At Skadden, he represented clients in complex civil litigation, including securities class actions arising out of the Madoff Ponzi scheme and litigation arising out of the 2008 financial crisis. Read More

OKLAHOMA CITY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW invites applications for one or more tenured or tenure-track faculty positions to begin with the 2022-23 academic year. We welcome applications from candidates with interests in any area of law, but we are particularly interested in candidates with a teaching interest in business organizations, energy law, environmental law, healthcare law, homeland security and national security, or secured transactions. We welcome candidates whose approaches in research will add to the scope and depth of our faculty scholarship.

Candidates should have an excellent academic background, demonstrated potential to be a productive scholar, a strong commitment to the practice of inclusion, and a strong commitment to becoming an engaged classroom teacher. Candidates must have a J.D. degree from an ABA accredited law school and be licensed to practice law in one of the states or the District of Columbia.

Oklahoma City University School of Law is located in downtown Oklahoma City and is deeply engaged with the legal, business, and governmental communities. Oklahoma City has been named “American’s Most Livable Community” and is consistently ranked among the most affordable and prosperous cities, among the top cities for entrepreneurs and small businesses, and among the best-run large cities.…

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I have been remiss in writing to honor the life and legacy of one of our colleagues (and one of my friends), Peter J. Henning.  Peter, a Professor at Wayne State University Law School until his untimely passing, died earlier this month after wrestling with a long-term, debilitating illness.  Our mutual friend, Stetson Law Professor Ellen Podgor, published a post in his memory back on the 18th on the White Collar Crime Prof Blog.  In the post, she reflected on their long-term friendship and initial co-editorship on the White Collar Crime Prof Blog.  She began by saying: “Peter Henning was an incredible writer, scholar, and teacher. Most of all to me – he was a good friend.”  I could have started this post the same way . . . .  Ellen also linked to the announcement posted by Wayne State Law.

Peter was one among a number of colleagues whom I believe understood me and my work well.  He valued my practice experience and encouraged my use of it in research and writing.  While our work intersected most in the insider trading realm, he motivated and supported my scholarship and teaching more broadly.  He enjoyed our discussion groups…

I cannot resist sharing with you today a proud moment that I had last week.  One of the 3L students that I mentor wrote a blog post that our Leading as Lawyers blog published. I could not be more proud.

I had been encouraging this student–a young woman I deeply admire–to write a post for us for a number of months.  She wasn’t sure.  But I kept telling her that she had such compelling stories to tell.  Nevertheless, she remained unsure until recently that anything she would write could speak in a powerful enough way about leadership.

More recently, the pieces of her professional development puzzle have started to fall into place.  As a result she could see it–she found her voice; she knew what she had to say.  The result of her labors can be found here.  The title alone is enough to make a business law prof proud: The Unlikely Avenue from Hopeful Environmental Litigator to Inspired Transactional Lawyer.  You can click on the link and read the post in its entirety.  But here is the bottom line:

When I came to law school, I was so scared of “selling out.” I thought that transactional law…

I begin teaching again on Wednesday.  The past few weeks have been occupied with course preparation as well as catching up on editing, writing, and other tasks abandoned during a month+ focused on the grading period, attentiveness to  a downturn in my dad’s health, Christmas, a nasty cold, and intensive physical therapy.  As I have focused on the spring semester, I continue to be concerned about helping to teach my students critical and intensive thinking, in and outside legal reasoning.  On this day honoring the life and many legacies of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I am inspired in my work by this passage from his writing–specifically, Chapter 1 of Strength to Love (1963; Pocket Book ed. 1964):

 . . . The tough mind is sharp and penetrating, breaking through the crust of legends and myths and sifting the true from the false. The tough-minded individual is astute and discerning. He has a strong austere quality that makes for firmness of purpose and solidness of commitment.

Who doubts that this toughness is one of man’s greatest needs? Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and…

Will Moon recently posted an article forthcoming in the Duke Law Journal to SSRN.  It’s a fascinating, accessible read and thoughtfully explores privacy as a functional feature of modern business entities.  Many states, Nevada included, allow the principal of a business entity to conduct business without ever disclosing the principal’s identity.  Most discussions about using business entities to cloak individual identity focus on how the wealthy and powerful use privacy to avoid accountability and evade responsibility.  Yet not enough attention has been paid to the other side of the coin, how privacy enables economic activity for persons with stigmatized identities or in areas where violent retaliation against a business’s disclosed principals may functionally force it to close.

A few years ago, Ann McGinley and I wrote about how some entrepreneurs will trot out persons with favored identities to access capital.  Because white men tend to raise more money, some entrepreneurs will strategically affiliate with white men to raise capital.  A proposal to create an agency for these purposes recently circulated online:

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Yesterday evening, the 2022 Association of American Law Schools Annual Meeting concluded.  Hosted on a platform using Zoom, the conference spanned five days.  It was a meeting filled with super papers and discussion, many worthy honorees, and a little bot of networking and fellowship (not as satisfactory over Zoom, of course).

I was invited by BLPB co-blogger John Anderson and Martin Edwards to be part of an exciting discussion group: A Very Online Economy: Meme Trading, Bitcoin, and the Crisis of Trust and Value(s) – How Should the Law Respond?  [Editor’s note: a hypertext link to John’s earlier blog post was added post publication.]  Participants were asked to write short papers on the topic and share their theses during the session at the meeting. Initially, I planned to write on something involving substantive doctrinal law stemming from the meme stock phenomenon or my work in crowdfunding, blockchains, or insider trading.  But the more I thought about it (and the topic), and with the conference’s programs honoring the life and legacy of Deborah Rhode in the foreground of my mind, the more I became convinced that I wanted to write/speak about lawyer leadership in this area at this time.

The…

Perhaps you missed these interesting programs–with super speakers–among all the amazing business associations, securities regulation, business transactions, etc. sessions!  I know I did and was glad a friend highlighted them for my attention.

Wednesday, January 5, 2022, 12:35 PM to 1:50 PM
Climate Finance and Banking Regulation: Beyond Disclosure?
Financial Institutions and Consumer Financial Services

U.S. banking regulation has been slower than other forms of financial regulation (and slower than in Europe) to address climate-related financial risks. This panel explores the role of banking regulation in addressing the physical and transition risks from climate change. Possible measures include: mandatory climate risk disclosures by banks; supervisory assessments of climate-related financial risk; capital and liquidity regulation; scenario tests; determination of the appropriate role of banks in mitigating climate risk; financial stability oversight of climate risk; and action (through the Community Reinvestment Act and otherwise) to deter harms to disadvantaged communities and communities of color from climate change.

    • Patricia A. McCoy, Boston College Law School, Moderator
    • Christina Skinner, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Speaker
    • Graham Steele, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Speaker
    • Hilary J. Allen, American University, Washington College of Law, Speaker
    • Nakita Cuttino, Georgetown University Law Center, Speaker from a

…

Yes, like many, I was saddened by the loss of TV personality Betty White on New Year’s Eve at the age of 99–just a few weeks shy of her 100th birthday.  I have been fascinated by the many tributes and, indeed, tuned in for the SNL reprise of her Mother’s Day host night (from eleven years ago!) on Saturday night.  Why are so many of us intrigued by this near centenarian whom we have never met in person?  I have mulled this as I complete the calculation of my fall semester grades, ready myself for presentations, commentary, and attendance at the 2022 AALS conference (which starts later this week), and prepare to start teaching for the spring semester.

My colleague and friend Stuart Brotman gets a lot of it right, imv, in this short post.  I invite you to read it.  Stuart is a lawyer embedded in our School of Journalism and Electronic Media (part of the College of Communication and Information) and on the Advisory Board for our Institute for Professional Leadership.  Here’s what I have culled from Stuart’s piece and other articles I have read (and from just watching Betty “do her thing”) over the past…

As the Interim Director of UT Law’s Institute for Professional Leadership (IPL), I have the privilege of working with a student fellow. Both last year’s fellow (chosen by the founder and Director of the IPL) and this year’s fellow (selected by me) have been advanced business law students. I have had the pleasure of getting to know both well, inside and outside the classroom. 

Our Hardwick Fellows have a number of roles in the IPL. They often involve collaborative tasks. One of the most fun components is our work co-editing guest posts for the IPL’s Leading as Lawyers blog. We read and revise posts authored by students, alumni, faculty, staff, and sometimes others. We endeavor to publish a post about every two or three weeks. Click on the “follow” button on our WordPress home page to receive email notices of new posts.

The IPL’s 2021-22 Hardwick Fellow is Stefan Kostas. As we sat down to do some semester-end planning, we somehow came to the idea of co-creating a holiday season post–a dialogue capturing some of our relevant reflections. We conducted the “conversation” by e-mail and then edited it. The end result is a post entitled: “Leadership Musings, Goal-Setting, and…

Following up on my December 6 post, I include below an update from AALS Section on Business Associations Chair (and friend-of-the-BLPB) Jessica Erickson relating to the upcoming AALS annual meeting elections for the Section on Business Associations.  I am impressed by the slate and know our section leadership will remain in capable hands!  I hope to see many of you on Zoom at one or more of the section programs, including the main program (described in my December 6 post) at which the voting for next year’s leadership will take place.  

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Dear members of the AALS Business Associations Section:

I am emailing to update you on the proposed slate for the AALS Business Associations Section’s Executive Committee. We have a great list of people who will be joining the section’s leadership. I am rotating off as chair at the end of the annual meeting, and Jim Park (our chair-elect) will automatically become the new chair. Mira Ganor has agreed to serve as next year’s chair-elect. Thanks to both Jim and Mira for their service to our section!

We also have three members rotating off the Executive Committee – Matt Jennejohn, Dana Brakman Reiser, and Andrew Verstein. We…